In order to compete in the new digital economy, businesses must become increasingly data-driven. Few executives would dispute this objective. Recent events, including the global outbreak of COVID-19, have underscored the critical importance of having reliable data to inform organizational decision-making. Yet companies continue to struggle to operate in a data-driven manner. Even though we are now decades into the age of competing with data, a 2020 NewVantage Partners survey of C-suite executives representing more than 70 Fortune 1000 companies found that only 37.8% of companies have created a data-driven organization.

Big Data and AI are now near-universally accepted as important pillars of business growth. They have managed to capture the attention and imagination of senior business decision-makers, grabbing a seat at the Board and C-Suite levels. It is difficult to imagine today, but there was a time a few years back when data analysts were relegated to the hidden recesses of most corporations. Before information technology (IT) emerged as a critical business function, data was considered something that firms filed away in vaults to comply with regulators and not a business asset that must be mined to unlock critical business insights. Firms perceived data as the purview of those who were sometimes derisively referred to as data geeks or "propeller heads."

Guru Hariharan, chief executive officer of Boomerang Commerce Inc., stands for a photograph after a Bloomberg Technology Television interview in San Francisco, California, July 2018. Boomerang Commerce Inc. provides online retail services by retailing analytics through complex optimization methods, machine learning and real-time data analytics. Machine learning has been one of the top tech new topics in recent months and is now being widely applied to businesses. Briefly, machine learning (ML) is an application of AI (artificial intelligence) that allows systems to learn and improve without being directly programmed. Focussing on the development of computer programs that can access data in order to learn autonomously, machine learning is being used by Google on its AI Platform which is bringing all its services, from data preparation to the training, tuning, deploying, collaborating and sharing of machine learning models.

Are computers going to take over the world? Not anytime soon if businesses commit to infusing cognitive computing into the DNA of each IT practitioner and changing the culture of IT organizations and the business they serve. The highest levels of analysis and computer learning need a corpus curated by subject matter experts in each of the traditional towers, such as the server, storage and network. While the central IT organization may create a common set of cognitive tooling, each tower should be responsible for populating its area's content. Population may fall to the senior tower practitioners.

And back to our emerging coverage of Asia/Pacific… where people tend to focus on China, India and Australia. However, the Japanese IT services market is larger than these three markets combined – and is growing. So, let's have our Asia/Pacific research lead, Andrew Milroy, discuss some of the important – and unique – aspects of this lucrative market. Japan's ageing and shrinking population creates real skills shortages and very high labor costs Japan is currently the only major developed country that is experiencing a population decline. Unlike other developed economies, it is not offsetting population decline with immigration.

Are algorithms taking over our jobs? Yes, yes they are… and that a good thing. An algorithm is a series of steps with rules that help us solve problems and accomplish goals. And when we structure these steps and rules the right way we can automate the algorithm to establish Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). And it is this A.I. that helps us do our analytical heavy lifting so we can focus our time on doing the things that we're good at… the things we were hired to do.

This article was written by a Data-centric Executive Management, Chris Pehura. Chris is a management consultant with a data emphasis helping Fortune 100/1000 companies strategically evolve and reinvent their businesses to maximize their revenue growth. Are algorithms taking over our jobs? Yes, yes they are… and that a good thing. An algorithm is a series of steps with rules that help us solve problems and accomplish goals.